The gunslinger had seen mirages before, but never like these. They were blurred, as if he was seeing them through lenses smeared with oil, and they were different from the usual images that a stranded, despairing man would see; there was no desert oasis with beautiful palms and clear blue springs full of sweet cold water.
Instead, there was a dog.
Large, lean and muscular with long, thick brindled fur and a friendly face, this was a dog like no other he had seen in Mid-World. For one, it was not a Mutie. It had the proper number of legs, no more and no less, and all four seemed to be growing from the right places. He saw the animal only for a moment at a time, sitting next to him and wagging his silky tail with one paw in the air, as if greeting the gunslinger with a wave. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had appeared. It was the first vision he had seen in the desert apart from the apparitions of his long dead friends and his lost Ka-Tet.
Then there was the room. He thought it odd indeed to hallucinate being in such a room in the middle of the desert. The room was outfitted for winter weather, with a blazing fireplace, thick quilts on the bed, and heavy drapes on the single small window. Near the fire, there was a knotted rug and an old wooden rocking chair with yet another large, warm-looking quilt folded neatly over the back and a small basket filled with what appeared to be knitting supplies sitting in its seat.
The woman had become the most frequently occurring vision. He could sometimes see her in the chair, softly singing and working at a ball of yarn with her knitting needles flashing in the firelight, or else dozing by the warmth of the hearth with the dog at her feet. She had curly auburn hair that was usually pulled away from her face, and a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. What really struck him, however, were her eyes. She had beautiful hazel eyes that were so much like Eddie's, round and clear and full of life.
He saw these eyes for the first time one day after collapsing, exhausted from his endless trek through the dunes. Lying in the sand, with his head aching and sweat stinging his tired eyes and sunburned skin, he was startled when he opened his eyes and saw not the cloudless and unforgiving desert sky, but this beautiful woman, reaching a gentle hand toward him, her lips moving in silent speech. Then, as if dissolving in the blazing heat, she vanished.
Somehow, the gunslinger instinctively knew that this was the woman whose voice had been carried to him on the wind, though he never caught her at it. She and her dog, and that cozy little room, filled him with a warmth and hope that he could neither describe nor understand.
The specters of his past had almost completely gone away, and these new images kept coming to him more and more often as he trudged through the sand. All thoughts of Walter O'Dim and the Tower had been pushed to the back of his mind, and he was now wholly determined to find this woman, whoever she was, and to thank her for saving his life.
He tried his best to ignore the voice in the back of his head, teasingly chiding him for chasing these images that, for all he knew, did not even truly exist.
